Yesterday, developer Stardock announced space 4X strategy PC game Galactic Civilizations III's long awaited expansion: Crusade.

According to Stardock, the expansion adds a slab of much anticipated features such as, interactive planetary invasions, espionage, galactic citizens, a civilization builder, new playable civilizations, a new campaign, an updated diplomacy system, an updated graphics engine and much more.

The new single-player campaign will introduce players to some of the new alien civilizations that the expansion comes with, as well as provide a "story-driven narrative of making the mistake that those soft, pink hominids of Sol 3 are push-overs."

As for the new civilization builder, players can now from the main menu design their own own unique civilization, including custom design all the ships that players will use for each role.

The new Galactic citizens feature means a player's agency within their civilizations are now expressed through their citizens. Citizens are created every several turns and can be specialized by the player into a variety of specializations to help boost their civilization globally or to enhance a specific planet.

Then you have the espionage addition. This new feature will allow players to train citizens as spies, and then use them to take down adversaries from behind the scenes. This includes destroying planetary improvements, stealing technology, or assassinating enemy agents.

Lastly, there is the new interactive invasions feature. With this, players will take citizens that have been trained as soldiers and battle it out across the planet's surface. Invaders choose where they will land and defenders will choose where they will resist, both decisions requiring considerable strategic thinking.

Paul Boyer, Lead Designer of Galactic Civilizations III accompanied the announcement with the following statement:

"Our focus with Crusade has been to create a much deeper yet more approachable space strategy game. At the heart of your civilization are your citizens. What you do with your citizens, whether that be training them to be scientists, engineers, farmers, soldiers, diplomats, merchants and where you send them will determine how your civilization evolves."

Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade is set to release sometime this spring at the price point of $19.99 USD. Below, you can check out the new announcement trailer: